Wow:
The new Washington Post/ABC news poll has all sorts of intriguing numbers in it but when you are looking for clues as to where the two parties stand politically there is only one number to remember: 21.
That’s the percent of people in the Post/ABC survey who identified themselves as Republicans, down from 25 percent in a late March poll and at the lowest ebb in this poll since the fall of 1983(!).
In that same poll, 35 percent self-identified as Democrats and 38 percent called them Independents.
That’s compared to 35 percent who self-ID as Dems, 38 percent (!) as Independents.
So the Democrats hold a huge structural advantage, though if the GOP can woo a significant number of independents, it can be viable again. And independents are liable to lose at least some faith in Obama/Democrats over time, and may be liable to gravitate toward the remains of the GOP.
Except:
The number of people who see themselves as GOPers is on the decline even as those who remain within the party grow more and more conservative.
That means that the loyal base of the party has an even larger voice in terms of the direction it heads even as more and more empirical evidence piles up that the elevation of voices like former vice president Dick Cheney does little to win over wavering Republicans or recruit Independents back to the GOP cause.
The result is obvious: a Republican Party that stays exactly as it is now. Same coalitions, same priorities, same ideology, same agenda.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
